Food Theory: How Pumpkin Spice Killed Coffee! (Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte)

Hear, hear,

pumpkin

spice

season has officially begun. The line is formed here. Wow, it's October and

pumpkin

spice

season is just beginning now. I must admit I'm a little surprised. I thought Starbucks would have started in August or something. You already know this. it's the line for next year's pumpkin spice

latte

right bro this year's pumpkin spice season is already over yeah like two years ago honestly try to keep up buddy hello internet , welcome to

food

theory

, the culinary show that's not just good for your stomach, it's good for your pumpkin there's nothing like fall is there?

The leaves are changing the weather is getting cooler and Americans are lining up to buy or hate at Starbucks the most popular seasonal drink of all time the pumpkin spice

latte

now if you've never experienced a pumpkin spice season in the United States What I need you to understand is that today's episode is not just about an overly sugary fall-themed drink, but beyond that, the pumpkin spice latte has become a force in itself itself since 2003. Starbucks has sold 424 million lattes in the U.S. On its own, that's not bad for a drink that's only available for a couple of months a year, but sales alone aren't enough.

What makes the pumpkin spice latte trend so notable is the cultural impact of it all, because it's not just Starbucks that's making pumpkin spice. It's everyone, when Starbucks first launched this drink, they didn't realize it, but they created a

food

revolution. Now, every fall, Americans are inundated with pumpkin spice

coffee

creamers, candles, donuts, cream cheese, waffle mixes, toothpastes, and four lokos. That last one actually turned out to be a joke, but you know, it's not a very good joke because if I saw a crazy Pumpkin Spice 4 on the shelf, I wouldn't even flinch since Pumpkin Spice is more than just a meme, it's not. fat or no longer pumpkin spice is old enough to drive people during its 17 year reign pumpkin spice has seen the rise and fall of the tidal pods of restless spinners and the word yolo, every one of those fads had a meteoric rise in popularity at which point, the haters swooped in and quickly reminded us exactly how disgusting each of these things were and Pumpkin Spice knows all about this because never in the history of hate has the internet tried killing something so difficult for Pumpkin Spice haters, the psl as it is known. in so many hashtags represents everything that is wrong with the Christmas season in America, not only was there no real pumpkin until 2015, but there is a feeling that ordering a pumpkin spice latte is openly embracing consumerism and jumping on whatever is generally in style at the moment aka basic and yet despite their best efforts, the haters have definitely lost this battle.

Fidget spinners couldn't stand the hate and quickly faded into obscurity. Yolo actually only lived once and not for long, but as for the pumpkin spice latte, it's popularity, especially in the United States, has only steadily increased year after year, apparently to these so-called Basic pumpkin spice lovers don't really care what the haters have to say, they like what they like and aren't ashamed of doing it. Admit it, I haven't had a Starbucks in a long time, literally since last fall. Oh, it's so good, it's amazing. I'm addicted when it's cold outside it gives you a warm feeling.

It's almost thanksgiving. It's Christmas. It feels good. the perfect

coffee

, we just come on, yes, yes, exactly, and hocus pocus is on Disney Channel, so it would seem that pumpkin spice latte just makes people feel good, evokes nostalgia for comfort and vacations with the family and hey, the large one is 380 calories, so it doesn't necessarily take a psychologist to understand the appeal, at the end of the day, this is just a drink that tastes like candy, on the other hand, maybe psychologists can be helpful here, I mean, there are a lot of amazingly unhealthy delicious drinks out there. drinks that exist and none of them have managed to integrate themselves into the fabric of pop culture like the pumpkin spice latte has, so what we will see today is how Starbucks did it, how they developed a product so comforting and so nostalgic. inducing that it became completely and absolutely hate-proof it turns out that there is a lot of science behind the hood.

The runaway success of the psl can be attributed to the fact that Starbucks has figured out how to hack almost every important region of our brain with just one small product, it all starts with the concept of scarcity where people value things more that are not abundant, for For example, Mr Beast fans can purchase products any time they want, but the moment he announces he will personally sign each hoodie or t-shirt. Ordered within a 24-hour period, fans flock to it and purchase over 68,000 of them and that same concept applies exactly to seasonal drinks like pumpkin spice lattes;

It is also a special product that is generally available only during a specific period of time. From the end of August to December, so when the psl ads start appearing, customers will know that if they want something with pumpkin spice, they have to get it now, otherwise they will have to wait until next year and this is the first how Pumpkin Spice Latte Hacks Your Brain Viewing a scarcity mindset increases activity in the orbitofrontal cortex region of the client's brain, which is involved in attributing value to things. A scarcity mindset also decreases activity in the client's dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is involved in higher-order goals.

Work memory. and attention allocation—basically, a customer's scarcity mentality causes them to inflate the perceived value of an item, while their ability to see the bigger picture is simultaneously depleted; In other words, they are more susceptible to marketing. Now Starbucks is doing this intentionally. 100 yes, remember the original psl syrup didn't have real pumpkin in it, it's not like we're dealing with a product that relies on seasonal produce. Friends, the supposed shortage of pumpkin spice latte is completely artificial, as artificial as the pumpkin spice latte flavor was for the first decade of its existence nailed its pumpkin spice latte syrup that bottle of pumpkin-flavored scientific substance sits behind the Starbucks counter year-round without ever getting old like Ryan Seacrest The greater perceived value of a seasonal beverage like the pumpkin spice latte makes it something of a symbol of status an item worthy of being shared, commented on and tagged online and when people see their peers participating in an event or trend without them, that is when the fear of missing out starts to appear and what we call fomo today is essentially the same survival instinct that always made our species afraid of being left out of the pack, according to clinical psychologist anita sans quote, having the impression that one is not part of the group is enough for the amygdala of many individuals to engage with the stress or the fight activation response or the flight response end of quote Naturally, one way to get rid of that stress is to join the herd and today enough Americans have joined the herd that seasonal drinks like Pumpkin spice latte and peppermint mocha are familiar terms, but there's obviously something more about pumpkin spice latte that the other seasonal drinks don't have, otherwise John Oliver would be ranting about the chestnut praline season or frappuccino season or like I just said, peppermint mocha season, what's the secret ingredient inside that pumpkin spice latte?

Well, one key difference is the season itself. Autumn and all the nostalgia that comes with it. Nostalgia activates a number of areas in the brain, including a number of reward centers such as the hippocampus, substantia, ventral tegmental area, and ventral striatum. For Americans, fall is an especially social time of year. Reminds me of trick-or-treating going back to school the fall theater production tailgating during football season being a singing football vendor selling popcorn in the stands I was shameless but of course one of the biggest events of the fall , Thanksgiving dinner with the family, fall has There's no shortage of great moments to feel nostalgic for, which means fall has no shortage of ways to activate the reward centers in your brain.

Now, of course, much of this could just as easily apply to the December holidays. Christmas is an extremely nostalgic time of year. For many of us, why aren't the peppermint mocha or eggnog latte high on the pedestal of the best-selling seasonal latte of all time? Well, one big reason is that Starbucks' December holiday drink lineup cannibalized each other in popularity in 2003. If you wanted a Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte fall seasonal drink, the only way to go was if you wanted a Starbucks Fall seasonal drink. season around Christmas time, although it had several successful drinks to choose from because the Pumpkin Spice Latte essentially had the entire market to itself. spreads its wings and really makes a cultural impact just in time for the rise of social media and fomo, as fate would have it another reason, although it could be execution, Starbucks put a lot of research and development into making sure the recipe of the pumpkin spice latte to be successful. our taste buds and brains the right way In the spring of 2003, Starbucks' liquid lab was tasked with capturing the essence of fall in a drink, after presenting a series of fall concepts to customers, they discovered. that the chocolate and caramel flavor is the most rated, while the pumpkin flavor was in the middle of the pack, however, Liquid Lab's espresso director, which has to be one of the best job titles of all times, Peter Dukes went ahead and made pumpkin one of the four flavors that advanced to the prototype phase.

Since there was nothing pumpkin-related at the time, Starbucks' pumpkin latte prototype was pitted against a chocolate-caramel drink, an orange-spice latte, and a cinnamon streusel latte that It would become the cinnamon dolce latte in a few years. later, but what the pumpkin had going for it was American tradition. Pumpkin is a New World pumpkin that has been a part of the American table since day one, so upon learning about this liquid, Labs zeroed in on a blend of spices used in the traditional pumpkin spice pie recipe. that appeared. in a 1936 cookbook that uses nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, cloves and ginger, and this particular blend of spices that had been in American tradition for generations would prove to be a nostalgia-inducing gold mine.

You see, aroma is the strongest sense linked to memory, the olfactory bulb is the First, information about the smell is processed in the brain and from there it sends the information for further processing to other regions of the brain, which They turn out to be the old friends we met earlier. The information from this episode is sent for further processing in the amygdala, which associates smells with emotions, the information is also transmitted to the hippocampus, which contributes to the formation of episodic memories that occur in a particular place and time, Information is also transmitted to the orbital frontal cortex, which associates smell and taste.

If you've ever taken a bite of an old family recipe and a memory of the summer you spent with your grandparents, that's exactly what's happening here. So as you can imagine, a drink that has both aromatic and spicy smells is ready to light up all those parts of the brain and activates a wave of positive emotion and nostalgic memories and Starbucks knows it, as the story goes, the laboratory team of liquids brought their own homemade pumpkin pies from family recipes and then alternated between bites of pie and sips of latte until they slowly perfected the perfect flavor profile for the drink they hoped would encapsulate fall, which is funny since psl is about as unnatural a drink as you can get today, only about five to ten percent of the spices in a pumpkin spice latte are real, the rest are flavor compounds that mimic spices that are normally found in the American closet.

In total, there are about 340 flavor compounds in thepumpkin spice lattes, even the inclusion of real pumpkin at Starbucks should be taken with a grain of salt depending on the meal. organization citing the amount of pumpkin puree added does very little more than appease those who wanted to see real pumpkin in the ingredient list, but here's the real twist folks, not only does psl trigger our fomo it decrease our ability to think rationally It increases its own perceived value and then hits us with aromas that greatly activate positive seasonal memories targeting almost every important part of the brain.

It also does one last thing that I think is just hilarious: it doesn't taste like coffee, as the story goes When the taste testers finally settled on a suitable pumpkin spice formula, some of the company's higher-ups were worried that It will cover up the flavor of the beans, as Tim Kearn, founder and former executive of Starbucks, admits, citing that several of us thought it was a drink so dominated by a flavor other than coffee that it did not put Starbucks coffee in the best light and that For me it's the best twist ever because the pumpkin spice latte formulation eliminates the last thing holding most other Starbucks drinks back and that's the coffee itself.

I don't know if you've ever had a conversation with anyone about this, but I know several people who don't like Starbucks coffee because they say it's too strong or tastes too burnt, and while that's my anecdotal evidence, they are not alone. In that assessment, if I asked everyone what coffee they wanted, each of you would say I want a dark, rich, hearty roast. What percentage of you really prefer a dark, rich, hearty roast? Between 25 and 27, most of you like weak coffee with milk. but you will never ever tell someone who asks you what you want that I want a weak coffee with milk.

You see, coffee is a strange drink because it is bitter and bitterness is something that humans have been evolutionarily prepared against since the days of cavemen because it served as a defensive mechanism that prevented us from eating poisonous foods and yet, according to the

theory

, coffee prevents that aversion due to conditioning, our brains are rewarded by the dose of caffeine when we drink it. a sip of coffee, so we condition ourselves to be okay with this flavor that we would otherwise be actively trying to avoid, but what if you had all the positive effects of caffeine and none of the bitterness?

Well, my friends, it's a drink that will sell. million and that's the pumpkin spice latte, which means in a delightfully ironic twist that the most popular coffee drinks at Starbucks would be the ones that taste the least like coffee and I think Starbucks has figured that out at this point, as an example , let's go international in Japan have launched Christmas Strawberry Cake Milk that incorporates the flavors of one of Japan's favorite Christmas desserts. The Japanese love their strawberry whipped cream sponge cake so much that they even have an emoji for it and Starbucks did their best to match the taste. to the point that it doesn't include coffee, only white mocha syrup in China.

Starbucks is wisely jumping on the cheese trend that is sweeping Southeast Asia. They listened to me well. I said the cheese trend is not a traditional part of the Chinese diet, but cheese drinks have become everything. The rage in the region in recent years Starbucks is doing its part to fan the flames with its snowy cheese latte, which sounds super strange, but so does putting a mild orange squash in the coffee, but regardless of which of these will take off or not, I think. What we have all learned today is that the most important ingredients are not necessarily the ones that reach our taste buds, but the ones that reach our brain, but hey, that's just a theory, a food theory.

Enjoy. Hey, if you liked this episode, be sure to check it out. Check out our other episode about coffee and how it changed the course of human history. I won't learn about this in your history books or you know you can just subscribe. Make sure you never miss another episode. We are like weak coffee with milk. from youtube is not one of those flashy and bold glasses, but generally everyone likes it, so have a drink and subscribe, it's good for your brain.